Cricket Premier League

The company, where I work now, organized a cricket tournament ‘OPL’ in the last weekend. 12 teams, representing various business groups, participated. ‘Throttlers’ is the team from my business group. They are the defending champions. Although they reached the finals, they lost the cup to the rivals by 3 runs.

Media Blitzkrieg

Two-three days before the match, all the teams except our ‘Throttlers,’ started a media war. Logos were created, posters were made, FaceBook fan pages were registered, Ringtones were offered for subscription and team videos with theme music were uploaded in YouTube. I was also told to be ready to design a poster, in-case we win.

But we lost the finals and became the “OPL Runner’s Up.” On Monday morning, I rushed to design a poster that exhibits a ‘never-say-die’ attitude.

Design Specifications

The mast head reads “We are second to none. Wait till 2012…” This clearly translated the idea that ‘Throttlers’ are in second place now; but will regain the cup in the very next chance.

The fonts used are Serena — for the mast head/ body copy, Rosewood Std. — for the logotype and Bernard MT Condensed — for the tagline. To create the ‘Throttlers’ wordmark, Victorian Style Photoshop Brush by DiaMara is used.

I hope you liked the poster.

Design Date: 13-June-2011

On 11-Apr-2010, IISc Alumni Cell is organising ‘Science & Technology Run’ or better known as ‘SnT Run.’ I got a chance to do the branding work. I have handled the branding of SnT Run of 2008. People liked the banners and posters very much: especially the ‘shoelace’ one. Read the full story here.

So here I am, trying to outrun myself.

I am doing three separate designs for SnT Run 2010. They are:

1. Logo Design
2. Poster Design for publicity
3. Banner design for the event

In this post, I am explaining only about the item 2: ‘Poster Design for publicity.’

Initial Ideas

I exactly know what I am NOT going to do this year. I am not going to use the imagery of a robot running. I am not going to use shoelaces. Although the run happens in the green campus of IISc, I am thinking about a race track. I am thinking about the markings on the turf. Then I have a view of somebody running towards the camera. He is running to me as if there is not much time left for the event. Wait, can ‘he’ be the date on which the SnT Run is happening?

The setting of the stage

This photo is taken by Sanja Gjenero (Lusi) from Croatia. Thank you Sanja for allowing me to use this photo.

Applying Gaussian Blur to a feathered selection showing depth
3D rendering of ’11 April 2010’ in SolidWorks 

Arranging the numerals and alphabets and applying blur

Adding shadows and applying blur

Adding the SnT Run logo on to the turf

The idea was that the date of SnT Run is approaching, so don’t be an onlooker, be a part and so ‘Better run…’

This is the finished poster. Click to enlarge.

Environment friendly posters are Green!

‘Run for science, run for environment’ is selected as this year’s SnT Run theme. Nowadays whenever people think of environment or eco-friendliness, the ‘green’ colour fills their imagination. So I am told to come up with a green version of the poster.

Desaturated image
 

‘Feathered’ track

Adding original image in the background

Adding a green layer on top of the feathered track only

Changing the opacity of the green layer and applying ‘Overlay’ blending mode

This is the finished green poster. Click to enlarge.

I will be writing about the other two designs (logo and banner) soon.

More Photos of SnT Run 2010 are uploaded here.

Software: Photoshop, SolidWorks
Design Date: 07-Feb-2010

Thus ‘dpe’ was born. ‘dpe’ means ‘Design | Participate | Excel.’ I made plans for a teaser kind of series ads to generate interest among the students.

Following are the three posters that were circulated as e-mails, one poster a day.

Notice the transition of background color and the change in the point of view of the box. ‘Provocative’ wordings like ‘We are second to none’ and ‘You are not a designer till you take part in this competition’ are coined and used. The box is open in the third poster only. The box and the alphabets are 3D modelled in SolidWorks software. We received quite a good number of responses for the first contest.

Software: SolidWorks, Photoshop
Design Date: 10-Nov-2009

I said to myself: “Here are some people who are genuinely interested about ads.” Then I started posting some articles in this forum. This blog post is entirely dedicated to nine posts authored by me in DesiCreative.com Forum in the year 2009. These nine posts discuss art, advertisements, animation film…
Enjoy!

1. Photoshop is helping “you!”

2. ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’

3. Color! Or is it ColoUr?

4. Inspiring — I hope one day I too will be doing this!

5. Darth Vader in our life

6. Devil, will you return (again)?

7. Careful when you park your car!

8. “Tell me, what was your first design?”

9. HP: Student work in response to D&AD Student Awards brief

This was one of the requirements I received from my friend describing the image to be put on a poster announcing the registration for a Soccer League.

As always, I designed three posters.

Corner Flag

This poster conveys the idea of soccer in a subtle manner. Apart from the logo, no football is featured in the visual. Fortunately, my friend too liked this poster very much. So it got printed in more numbers. I received some positive comments from my friends. This success shows that deviating from the requirements and creating something fresh (and green!) will always be liked by others.

‘Boy band’

Three silhouetted players are walking towards the camera dribbling the ball – just like a slow motion visual from a music video of a boy band. Vibrant colours and a subtle motion blur to the ‘Are you ready?’ caption… also went into this poster.

“Goal!”

A conventional, but a brilliant ‘save’ scene. Again vibrant colors… In this poster too, I added a motion blur to the ‘Are you ready?’ caption.

Acknowledgements
The following images are used to realize these posters:

• ‘Soccer’ by Admane Samir, Algiers, Algeria.
• ‘Football field’ and ‘Goalkeeper’ by Rawku5, Germany.
• ‘Training’ by Gabriella Fabbri, Italy.

Software: Photoshop
Design Date: 17-Sep-2009

‘Voices’ is a student magazine in my college with the slogan ‘Raise your voice, let yourself be heard!’ I got a chance to design posters that ask students to be a part of the magazine.

One of my earlier attempts of poster design for this same magazine can be found here.

‘Up’

Image Courtesy: Richard Sweet, London, UK

‘Mute’

Image Courtesy: Dimitris Kritsotakis, Athens, Greece

‘Voice’

Image Courtesy: Ingrid Müller, Porto Alegre, Brazil

Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3
Design date: 18-Aug-2009

This sticker urges people to minimize the use of cars and adopt walking or public transport system. This reduces fuel consumption and ultimately saves trees.

Click on the image for a bigger picture.

Image Credits:
‘Trees:’ Sophie, Canada
‘Rear-view mirror:’ Marcio, Brazil
‘Wooden background:’ Salva Barbera, Spain

Software: Photoshop
Design Date: 06-July-2009

Results of general elections in India are announced a few days back. This time, many of the candidates used the latest technologies like blogs, twitter, Orkut groups, Flash banner ads in websites, SMS campaigning… Also we saw a lot of public service ads urging citizens to use their fundamental right to vote.

In my college, this year’s Students’ Council Elections were held on 16-May-2009. I got the opportunity to design a series of posters to inform students about the election. Time frame for executing the work was very short.

Design Thoughts
Three posters are planned: One, a general poster about the election and important dates; second, a poster about Soap Box event of the candidates and third; a ‘Vote Now’ poster.

I didn’t want to depict a ballot box, people or other often repeated images for the work. A few months ago, I have used an image – ‘Leader’ taken by Sanja Gjenero from Zagreb, Croatia. Sanja has other images too in the same series. I selected three images – ‘Parliament,’ ‘Public Speaking’ and ‘Yes/No.’ Thus the ‘Let us…’ series happened.

And then…
The posters stood out in the notice boards owing to the bright and the riot of colors in a white background. The contrast of the posters was very high compared to the other posters and this became the differentiator. I am not claiming that the students’ turnout on the voting day is only because of the posters.

From the feedback, I got the impression that I goofed up in the body copy. All the dates were very confusing to the people. I think a small formatting may have done the trick. See what I mean:

Thanks a lot for all your feedback. Thank you Sanja, for the great images. You saved the day! More information on the students’ council elections are available at ‘Voices’ website.

Software: Photoshop
Design Date: 12-May-2009

The Premise
In 2007, the technology company, where I worked, was thinking about conducting a walk-in interview to attract new talent to fill in some positions. Handouts were to be printed and a newspaper advertisement must be given. I was approached to do the design. A couple of samples were given to me. I started my work.

One is not enough
I always follow the practice of giving more than one option for the clients. This means more hard work, but in the end, I have more chances of winning an account. The safest bet is to do a conventional one, a rebellious one and a creative one.

Conventional ‘Dream’ Ad
If you open any newspapers and look at the recruitment ads, most of them fall under the ‘text only’ ads category. A couple of them may feature typical happy faced employees in formal attire, looking at you. Or you can see a vast office space, cubicles with all the latest technology devices or a team meeting proceeding at the board room.

The words that came to my mind were ‘dreaming,’ and ‘high flying.’ Then I remembered: I had a vast collection of photographs that I took during my second visit to the wonderful country of South Korea. After digging up my hard disk, I found a couple of photos. All of them are taken on 29-Apr-2007 at Joyeong-dong, near to Yeungnam University, South Korea.

Now, the story takes a new path…
Click on the photos for a larger view.
These are mounts that served as tombs of old ruling classes in Korea. After the excavations in 1987, this place is kept as a recreational area and many people visit there in the evenings.

I spotted three friends relaxing on top of a mount.

When I went near to them, one of them looked at my OLYMPUS camera. English will not help you to communicate in South Korea as only a few people understand the language. I lifted my camera and the guy immediately understood my intention. His friends were lying down and this man sat there with a ‘natural pose’ gazing to a distance. I clicked his photo from a low angle and I vaguely remember seeing a jet trail on the top left of the view finder.

Later, I also clicked the jet trail in the blue sky. Yes, there is a television antenna too.

For my ‘dream’ ad, I combined these two photos and wrote the mast head “Dreaming a high-flying career in technology?’

This is the final product.

‘Bud’ – The Rebel
Can a technology company flaunt a playful look? Of course, yes. The best example is Apple Inc. ‘Budding talents’ was the keyword in my mind and I wanted to give a colorful look to the whole ad. This will help to grab attention of the reader when he browses the newspaper page full of ‘text only’ ads.

I took some photos of the Chinese toy — a solar powered ‘Flip-Flap’ bud. The shape of this toy was mapped in Photoshop and was used to create colored silhouettes that overlapped in the background. ‘Overlay’ and ‘Hard Light’ layer effects were used to create the interesting interference effects.

‘ID Card’ – You are the hero!
To cajole the reader, this advertisement tried to make him the central character. This ad asks for your photo to be put in the ID card of the company. It is very difficult to resist such an invitation.

What you see is the photograph of my yellow striped shirt, my Parker ball pen and my ID card. I took this photo by spreading the shirt on a table with all the accessories as shown.

Were they got published?
None of these works were published in the newspaper as the company headquarters supplied an ad specifically for the walk-in interview. There were talks on printing my work as handouts to be distributed at the venue of the interview. The ‘ID Card’ ad was later modified with this line ‘We have a space for your friend’s photo’ so that it could be used as an e-mailer inviting referrals from employees. If my memory serves me right, nothing happened to these ads.

But I am very proud of creating them. The experience was nice and I got a lot of feedback from my friends that helped me in my future assignments.

Sherlock Holmes – The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“Well,” said our engineer ruefully as we took our seats to return once more to London, “it has been a pretty business for me! I have lost my thumb and I have lost a fifty-guinea fee, and what have I gained?”
“Experience,” said Holmes, laughing. “Indirectly it may be of value, you know; you have only to put it into words to gain the reputation of being excellent company for the remainder of your existence.”

Software: Photoshop
Design Date: 17-July-2007

Need more information about FreeAgent|Go? Visit these pages in Seagate website.

What do you think? Feel free to drop a comment below…

Seagate and IBNMS (Indian Blog & New Media Society) are organizing a contest. All the above designs are done as an entry to this contest and not in the capacity as an advertising campaign. antzFx.com may not necessarily share the views expressed in the designs. Images from Seagate.com; free stock images by ImageBazaar.com, BarunPatro.com and Octa Dan (Romania); free icons by DezinerFolio.com are used.  All images, trade marks and logos used are the property of respective owners. Any commercial use of these designs as such requires permission from the respective owners.

After the contest, this page shall be modified to include the thought process behind the above designs with detailed illustration. So, leave your comments and check back later.

IBNMS announced the names of the winners on 04-Apr. My name didn’t figure in the list. I would like to thank all the people who commented about my work.
As promised, here is the story about the creation of the above five ads.

Design brief
I downloaded a datasheet about FreeAgent|Go from Seagate website. This document is nicely written and explains the features of the product in simple sentences. This document formed the basis for all the ad designs and I relied on it for the Seagate logo and product logo. From the website, screenshots of all the color variations of the product is also captured.

Layout
Initially I planned for only three ads. Later I was able to conjure up two more ads making a total of five designs. All the ads have a basic layout as shown below.

1.    Product name layer: This layer has the Seagate and FreeAgent|Go logos.
2.    Mast head layer: This layer handles the text that is first noticed by a viewer. Yanone Kaffeesatz font, 36 and 24 points. The quotation marks are in 150 points.
3.    Body Copy Layer: An explanatory note is given in this layer. Also, a note about the work being a contest entry is also given. Yanone Kaffeesatz font, 18 points.
4.    Foreground photo layer: The overall color pattern of the ad is based on the color of the product featured in this layer. In three of the ads, an image of a boy in yellow T-shirt is also present in this layer.
5.    Base layer: This layer flaunts a diagonal stripe and carries a tone similar to that of the product in each ad.
6.    Background photo layer: This layer features the prominent background of each ad.

Ad 1: Fumbling for wires
500GB is the data capacity of this cute device. My hard disk has a lot of heavy PSD, TIF and AVI files. Enter the image of a marketing guy in a movie based industry like advertising. Setting up a presentation is a headache and I do have considerable experience in that. The desktop dock accessory hopefully reduces the complexity. A simple search in imagebazaar.com resulted in a good image in muted tones that exactly matches the color of the featured product.

Ad 2: Entertainment needs
These days, youngsters store a lot of files and any amount of memory space is not enough for them. Bulk of their storage space is consumed by music, films, photos and other files. These are represented by icons (icON stage) made by dezinerFolio. I found a ‘Smiling Portrait’ of a youth by Barun Patro, India. Incidentally, the boy’s T-shirt color matched with the font color of a part of the product name. The background image of a laptop, some papers and a cup of coffee is downloaded from imagebazaar.com.

Now I think that this image is not apt. The photo of a tabletop with some text book and papers, may have been a good choice.

Ad 3: More is not enough
Now I remember the green TDK 1.44MB floppy disk I proudly owned in 1997 when I was studying for Electronics Engineering. We are now talking about Terra Bytes! 500GB means what? A simple calculation showed that it means more than 700 CDs or more than a 100 DVDs. These thoughts led to the ‘disc burning’ ad. The image is again from imagebazaar.com and it perfectly matched with the tone of the ad.

Ad 4: Go out of the dialog box!
How can I represent a fast data transfer speed? My initial attempt was the following version that used of the ‘Motion Blur’ filter in Photoshop.

But it didn’t convey the point. After getting a few feedbacks from my friends, I re-designed it and this is the version I submitted for the competition.

The dialog box and background is taken from my own laptop PC.

Ad 5: Wallet, Mobile phone and Seagate FreeAgent|Go
Do you ever step out of your room without your mobile phone? Portability of the Seagate product is addressed in this ad. The ‘blurred’ mobile phone in the background is a Sony Ericsson set and the photo is taken by Octa Dan, Romania.

The color of its centre button matches with the featured product. Well, you should look closely!

That’s all. I hope you enjoyed this post.

Software: Adobe Photoshop
Design date: 10-Mar-2009